In this type of consideration, could language be considered a resource? I find it difficult to connect with people I can't speak to. What about culture -- is culture a resource?

And I'd use the 'system' to make it happen knowing full well that using the system reinforces the system. It is also the one certain peaceful mode of changing the system.

I have to agree on this in theory. I would warn, however, that many systems are insufficiently complex when too specific, or insufficiently specific when vague enough to be sufficiently complex. Which approach would you take? A highly specified system (like communism or socialism)? Or a low specificity system (democracy or anarchy)?

A steady-state population spread out more or less evenly across the globe with water, food, and shelter available to all. Human connectedness depends upon meeting survival needs, safety and security needs.

"More or less evenly" around resource clusters, or more or less evenly within cities between farms, or each person individually spaced approximately equally?

Assuming that not every human feels connected to every other human in the same way, and family grouping clusters will exist, and farms will have to exist between population groups, how exactly would this even distribution be effected? Does this entail reproduction limitations? State schools? Vertical vs. horizontal distribution?

Consequently, the first order of business is to work on the global water supply, i.e., making the water supply global.

What approach to environmentalism are you taking then? Bringing water to areas where there was previously no water would result in massive environmental imbalance, the widespread extinction of low-water flora and fauna, the mass extinction of wild and migratory animals, a massive increase in planetary cloud cover from increased land surface evaporation, dramatic shifts in rainfall, lord-knows-what extent of seepage into ground water reserves, liquification of surface soils...

I can only assume then you would approach environmentalism as a globally managed environmental practice versus a bordered wild-environment practice.

On the other hand, if water was not an issue in the Middle East or Africa or the Outback or the Sonororan Desert or the Gobi, then food might be less of an issue.

Does this entail the domestication of all wild species that exist in those environments, then? Or their extermination? What about the people who live there?

My next priority is working the water purification issue to make all water usuable.

Including desalination? Salinity of the oceans is one of the many, many factors that keeps the environment in check, so I would suggest that widespread desalination is probably a horrible idea to make water usable. Australia has been wrestling with this for a decade. And you Americans have been taking water from us Canadians for years at an unbelievably low cost to you, and a ridiculously high cost to us. We've been wrestling with it for years. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/1999/...ter990210.html

I suggest we all strip naked, fornicate wantonly, eat fruits and vegetables that grow naturally, eat peyote mushrooms whenever we choose, live communally without any papers from the local city hall, forget about money and labels and status symbols (other than the obvious under the circumstances described) and want only what we need to accomplish the above.

No, I haven't read The Beach. I have read On the Beach, though. Does that count?

could language be considered a resource? ...What about culture -- is culture a resource?

Is the loss of a language or a culture going to impact consumerism? If so, then in terms of this problem, it must be considered a resource.

Which approach would you take?

I would use the systems already in place.

"More or less evenly" around resource clusters, or more or less evenly within cities between farms, or each person individually spaced approximately equally?

Suppose you subtracted Antarctica from the numbers, then you’ll have 134,344,000 square kilometers of land mass on good ole Earth. Of that, 33% lies in Asia (which in this accounting includes the Middle East). Europe has 7% and North America 14%.
Suppose you counted up all the people in the world and wrote it down real fast before it changed again – which it did while you were writing it down – then you’d guesstimate that there are damned near 6.4 billion people living on the planet. That means that each of us has pretty close to 6,396,499,999 neighbors. And I don’t know hardly any of them.
Sticking with the numbers though, in Asia (yes, still including the Middle East), 60% of the world’s population lives on 33% of the world’s land mass. That’s 9 people per square kilometer. In Europe, 11% of the world’s population lives on that 7% of the total land mass for 7.6 people/sq km, and in North America 8% of the total population lives on that 14% of the land mass. That’s 20 people per sq km.
However, before we get all huffy about how North America is not doing it’s fair share, consider Australia/Oceania where a mere ½ of 1% of the world’s population is living on 6% of the world’s total land mass for 4 people/sq km.
Oh yeah, the final really scary numbers. The proportion of the world’s population living in cities rose from 29% in 1950 to 47% in 1998 and is projected to rise to 55% by the year 2015.

Bringing water to areas where there was previously no water would result in massive environmental imbalance, the widespread extinction of low-water flora and fauna, the mass extinction of wild and migratory animals, a massive increase in planetary cloud cover from increased land surface evaporation, dramatic shifts in rainfall, lord-knows-what extent of seepage into ground water reserves, liquification of surface soils...

2.5% of the total fresh water available around the globe is in the form of ice and permanent snow. With poles slowly metling away, the amount of moisture entering the atomospher increases. That water must go somewhere. When it does we lose species, e.g., polar bears. When it goes elsewhere, we will lose other species. No matter what we do, we lose species. The nice thing about nature is that species adapt, fill in the niches vacated, and life goes on. Consider the wolf and the coyote. The coyote, in under 50 years, spread from the Sonoran desert to virtually everywhere on the NA continent. In the words of the immortal bumper sticker: **** happens.

We've been wrestling with it for years.

Better to wrestle than to fight, wouldn't you say? My home state has been wrestling with California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado for more than 50 years over the rights to the Colorado River water. We won the court battle in the 60s, but, as with all court battles, it simply resumed on another front. In the meantime, the enlightened immigrants from the eastern seaboard came to the Sonoran desert and built lakeside communities.

Is the loss of a language or a culture going to impact consumerism? If so, then in terms of this problem, it must be considered a resource.

The loss of it of language and culture is definitely important to those who lose it. Look at the Palestinians, or post-colonial indigenous people across the planet. The value of it, as a resource, is one of the incalculable elements of the planet's human ecologies. Language and culture are the bonding agents that keep some groups of neighbours together and others apart. The sense of distinction and difference -- the unique element of existence -- is largely informed by language and culture.

So the loss then makes it a resource, absolutely. There is also the question of the end-product language/culture we derive from our proposed solution. If our goal is to sustain the planet, then a resource that needs to develop is an as-yet non-existent planetary eco-culture and language. How would we go about creating that resource?

Does the system you propose require a universal language or culture?

I would use the systems already in place.

You're proposing a worldwide solution. There are several systems in place. You mean the American system?

I suspect the American system would roundly reject your proposed solution. Unless you are the most eloquent speaker of all time -- better than Hitler and JFK combined -- then the average, lazy, systemically stuck, economically sunk, debt riddled democratic citizen is going to look at your plan and go "WTF? I have to move? Where? Why?"

Environmentalists would **** a brick. Human rights organizations worldwide would become militant!

Suppose you subtracted Antarctica from the numbers, then you’ll have 134,344,000 square kilometers of land mass on good ole Earth. Of that, 33% lies in Asia (which in this accounting includes the Middle East). Europe has 7% and North America 14%.

Poor Africa and South America!

Sticking with the numbers though, in Asia (yes, still including the Middle East), 60% of the world’s population lives on 33% of the world’s land mass. That’s 9 people per square kilometer. In Europe, 11% of the world’s population lives on that 7% of the total land mass for 7.6 people/sq km, and in North America 8% of the total population lives on that 14% of the land mass. That’s 20 people per sq km.

Also, do your area-per-person quantities take into account the area of farm land per person required to keep them fed? Does it take into account available land-fill space required per person to allocate their waste? What about space for the resources we use to build the things we use?

consider Australia/Oceania where a mere ½ of 1% of the world’s population is living on 6% of the world’s total land mass for 4 people/sq km.

Consider that Australia/Oceania has virtually every single one of the world's deadliest animals and viruses. Consider than Australia's natural environment is a fire-based ecology and has to burn down in order to grow. Consider that Australia's aboriginal people are adapted into the ecological system. Consider that Sydney to Perth is the same distance as New York to Honolulu, and that Australia is some 6000+ kms away, separated by oceans, from the nearest substantial fresh water sources. Consider that the nearest large fresh water source is in China, where the aforementioned 60% of the world's population lives.

There is no way to make Australia a globally habitable place, even if the moral and ethical issues in doing so weren't tantamount to genocide!

Oh yeah, the final really scary numbers. The proportion of the world’s population living in cities rose from 29% in 1950 to 47% in 1998 and is projected to rise to 55% by the year 2015.

Why is that scary, exactly? City dwellers, individually, have a lower environmental impact than their rural and suburban brethren. Many cities are veritable models of efficiency. They are the home of culture and language and education. Such population centres have existed throughout human history.

Outside your personal preference in living arrangements, what exactly makes cities a serious consideration in the problem?

2.5% of the total fresh water available around the globe is in the form of ice and permanent snow. With poles slowly metling away, the amount of moisture entering the atomospher increases. That water must go somewhere. When it does we lose species, e.g., polar bears. When it goes elsewhere, we will lose other species. No matter what we do, we lose species. The nice thing about nature is that species adapt, fill in the niches vacated, and life goes on. Consider the wolf and the coyote. The coyote, in under 50 years, spread from the Sonoran desert to virtually everywhere on the NA continent. In the words of the immortal bumper sticker: **** happens.

But what you're proposing is to make **** happen.

First off -- the coyote was already more widespread than just in the Sonoran desert. It has existed across North America since before Europeans got here. As a solitary creature, it naturally evades certain limitations that pack/herd creatures can't cope with caused by human intervention. Human borders and fences have cut off the mobility of herd animals, ending their migratory channels. The coyote is a solitary scavenger and can easily move around between our fences. Mass hunters and grazers have no such luxury. The coyote survives largely off of human waste. I don't understand how this is supposed to be an example that would support any kind of good environmental practice. This is an example of **** happening that we didn't really predict -- incidental. What your proposing, though, takes the incidental things that have lead to the present situation and makes them even more widespread.

Now let's say we took your population figures are really broke them down. Assuming cities really are a problem, assuming we want to level them out and limit their population size so that they conform to an even population distribution across the surface of the earth -- what would the surface of the earth look like?

What we end up with is basically 72 m2 of land per person (based on a population figure of 7 billion, and that's including Antarctica because hey -- it's melting, right? And we need to maximize our land usage, right?). 72 metres. That's basically an 8m x 8m box of space per person across the entire planet. Including the tops and slopes of mountains. Every single human, distributed evenly, gives each of us about the size of a basketball court.

So let's say that people continue to decide to share their lives together and cohabitate. So maybe that's 3 basketball courts of space per person. Which is what suburbia already has -- and suburbia is amongst the largest group of polluters.

If everyone put a fence around their chunk of land, there is no more wildlife. At all. Everyone's backyard becomes a garbage dump? (unless you propose we chuck it in the oceans?) Everyone maintains their own farm? Do the people who live next to the lake get to use the water directly from the lake? How are their resources allocated? How do people get around? Where do they get their power from? Are they allowed to build upwards on their properties? Is it their property?

How much space does industry get? Do they get a share of the water? Will there be large farms? Or does everyone have to feed themselves? How much space does commerce get? How do people get to and from work? Where do they work?

And while I'm at it... how do you get rid of desert ribbons/patches? Weather patterns being what they are, every single continent has a dry area that is roughly 1000-2000kms inland from its westernmost coast, or strung behind a mountain range. Do we over-water these area and under-water the others?

What about areas of geological importance? World heritage sites? Parks?

And you Fung? A conservative? Afraid of a bit of lawless behavior? Or should I say subjectively assessed courses of action?

I'm all for a bit of hedonism. But if we're trying to imagine a course of action that will lead to positive results, stripping naked and fornicating wantonly is either ignoring the problem (at best), or making it unimaginably worse.

If humanity was content to let mother nature do her thing while we run about shitting willy nilly in the woods we wouldn't be where we are today. We can't undo what's been done, so proposing a return to the wild hardly seems a sensible solution.

You're a sensible person concerned with ethics and morality and duty and responsibility and legacy. Surely you've got a better idea than wanton fornication and nudity!?!?!

FooMeister: Here's what's interesting:
You came up with a plan that I immediately criticized.
I came up with something off the top of my head that you immediately criticized.
I have no idea whether what I dreamed up has any possiblity of actual implementation because I am thinking of evening out the rainfall* and then getting the population out of the cities whose ecological footprint is much greater than the sum of the individuals' waste.
Still, whenever either of us proposes something, the other spends all our time showing why it won't work instead of trying to understand how to make it work. I know I don't have all the answers since I only dreamed the scheme up yesterday.

Making **** happen is a basic fundamental in the approach you chose and in the approach I chose. I suspect making **** happen is fundamental to implementing any plan of action as well as sitting back and doing nothing. I suppose it could come down to drawing up lists of pros and cons, weighing the balances, and choosing to do something.

As for as destroying cultures go, any proposal to change the way of the world impacts one or more or every culture. Name a culture more deserving of preservation than any other.

* Do you suppose if we built pipelines into the dry areas of the world through which we released humidity into the air, it would have the effect of creating rain where there normally isn't rain?

I was only partially kidding. Only partially. I think there's a lot of truth to the concept of returning to the earth. And i think we're starting to realize that on an institutional level now. Green this, green that, organic this organic that, etc etc.

But I'm not sure that we can do all that much about it on a global level. It's easy for us to talk here. We speak the same language no matter how much we might disagree. And we have the leisure and the technology to debate these issues. Most of the population of the world doesn't.

50,000 dead in China from an Earthquake. 100,000 in Myanmar. Can you relate to those numbers of dead bodies?

FooMeister: Here's what's interesting:
You came up with a plan that I immediately criticized. I came up with something off the top of my head that you immediately criticized.

Isn't that what we always do? A sign of a healthy relationship

I am thinking of evening out the rainfall * Do you suppose if we built pipelines into the dry areas of the world through which we released humidity into the air, it would have the effect of creating rain where there normally isn't rain?

It is definitely possible. There's a lot we could do to have an increased effect on the environment.

I have some major reservations with this as a basic idea, though. At present, we have a fairly organically developed system which has naturally localized around the various watering holes and food troughs of the planet. My major reservation is this -- do we really want to introduce environmental changes that further increases the spread of humanity? Especially if doing so (which we can predict with about 100% accuracy) would mean the demise of whole ecologies of flora and fauna?

I can see that there could be some very real advantages to getting water distribution to a more even ratio worldwide. The Outback, for example, is already undergoing a variety of experiments to increase vegetation cover (and thus water retention). Once upon a time much of it was a lot like our prairies. Colonial humans spread out into the Outback because it appeared habitable. Our spread all but killed it. We trampled the vegetation, it turned to a hard layer of clay, and it's been nearly dead ever since. Even if we could bring it back to life, common sense tells us we still need to stay off of it. It was never meant for cattle or sheep. It's in a place in the world that simply cannot support a Euro-American ecology.

and then getting the population out of the cities whose ecological footprint is much greater than the sum of the individuals' waste.

Whose definition of the footprint, though? There's a lot of bias and general BS floating out there about the environment that we need to sift through. I don't think we need to do away with cities so much as we need to organize them a little better, change the way they acquire certain key resources, and change the way they manage waste. Between the urban areas and the rural areas, I'd wager that it will prove significantly easier to make cities environmentally friendly.

Still, whenever either of us proposes something, the other spends all our time showing why it won't work instead of trying to understand how to make it work. I know I don't have all the answers since I only dreamed the scheme up yesterday.

Had any new ideas since yesterday?

Sorry if I jumped on your idea too hard. I think we both know that any socio-cultural-political changes either of us suggest are going to be relatively easy to poke holes in. Such changes are going to be the hardest ones to make. I don't imagine either of us will get our way! But I've tried to focus my criticism more on your technological/environmental proposal.

It's not that I think what you propose won't work. In fact, if we really set our minds to it I'm certain we could make it work with relatively little effort. I just don't think we should even touch that. I think it will create many, many more problems, not less.

I'm not trying to act like I have all the answers -- I'm just asking (hopefully) critical questions about a proposed solution to tease out it's weaknesses and strengths. Like Sun Tzu says, only fight a battle you've already won.

Making **** happen is a basic fundamental in the approach you chose and in the approach I chose. I suspect making **** happen is fundamental to implementing any plan of action as well as sitting back and doing nothing. I suppose it could come down to drawing up lists of pros and cons, weighing the balances, and choosing to do something.

That's what I'm hoping for! No solution will be perfect, but we've got to come up with something. Many environmentalists are now criticizing what few sustainable technologies we have as being perhaps even more detrimental than what we've already got. There's a lot of subtext built into those criticisms though.

The way I see, modern life is based on one thing and one thing only. Whether you live in a city, a suburb, or out in the desert, there's only one thing we've created that if you took it away, everything would change. All other considerations are distractions. If we want to keep modern life, but reduce what modern life does to our planet, that's the thing that needs fixing first and foremost.

So, how do you see it? And how do we change it?

As for as destroying cultures go, any proposal to change the way of the world impacts one or more or every culture. Name a culture more deserving of preservation than any other.

In the Americas and Australia I think it's quite easy to argue that the preservation of Eurocentric post-colonial culture is significantly hampering the preservation of the cultures of the colonized. I'd say those indigenous cultures are more deserving of preservation.

But don't you think that there are things we could change that wouldn't hurt culture, but enhance it? Sure, not everyone will view some given change as a benefit. But there are degrees of bad and good in change, aren't there? I value diversity, so I react to your suggestion based on the apparent result that it will all but destroy diversity.

So out of all this, here's what I've got... Cities are producing more than their fair share of waste/environmental impacts, but fewer emissions. Rural and industrial areas are producing more emissions, more or less waste depending, and have serious incidental ecological impacts on wildlife. It is quite likely that an economic-environmental solution that will work for rural areas is unlikely to work in urban areas, or vice versa. Same for industry. All areas are beholden to the firm grasp of consumerism.

Using your version of "The Road to Ruin" problem -- that: "Consumerism as the basis for an economy has problems; that among these are dwindling and wasted resources, the breakdown of human connectedness, and the certain consequence of an ugly period of adjustment that must accompany its falling from grace" -- it follows that the fall from grace is something we're hoping to avoid, but that addressing the problems inherent to consumerism will affect each aspect of human organization differently.

So -- though acknowledgeably unlikely -- is it still possible for there to be a single solution? Or do we need to come up with several different solutions? Should those solutions work in harmony? Or should they worry about that later, on the assumption that anything that cleans up the environmental impact of any one area is of benefit to all?

And here's a quick question to anyone reading this thread: Earthworms -- good or bad?

I think there's a lot of truth to the concept of returning to the earth.

What, specifically, in your estimation, is it that has taken us away from the earth? And based on that answer, do you think that it is possible to maintain the things that have taken us away from the earth and make them more... earthy?

But I'm not sure that we can do all that much about it on a global level. It's easy for us to talk here. We speak the same language no matter how much we might disagree. And we have the leisure and the technology to debate these issues. Most of the population of the world doesn't.

With respect, most of the rest the world without these technologies are probably not the ones causing all the problems! The carbon emissions and environmental impact resulting from the production of one computer is claimed to be equivalent to the entire existence of between 50 and 200 people in "naturalized low-tech" environments. I don't know about you, but since 1995 I think I've personally owned 7 computers! That somewhere between 350 and 1400 lives worth of environmental impact. Yowzers! Us debating this is part of the problem! Is that easy for you to do?

50,000 dead in China from an Earthquake. 100,000 in Myanmar. Can you relate to those numbers of dead bodies?

Can you relate to 7,000,000 Jews dead in concentration camps?

And don't forget the 260,000 dead on Christmas 2005. True, the planet doesn't care if it kills us. It'll keep doing its inorganic things no matter what we do to the organic parts of the world. And the more of us who live on top of the surface, the more will die each time the earth does its thing. But earthquakes are probably not our fault, so that's 310,000 recent deaths we're not responsible for beyond being in the wrong place and the wrong time.

Weather phenomena might be our fault. And if they are, it could be a hell of a lot worse than the Holocaust or the Rwandan genocide or Stalin's population culls, etc... Humans are good at killing each other, and the more of us there are, the more of us will die. But when we affect the weather, it doesn't know it's killing us. It doesn't care. But we should.

"Returning to nature" is arguably both impossible and imaginary. The idea that we were ever divorced from nature is questionable. And what does "returning" to nature really mean? Removing the language gene from our DNA? Regrowing fur?

Our metabolism has adapted such that our digestive system prefers meat to be cooked. Cooking, even over a campfire with a stick, is technology and not "natural." Planting seeds in a row is not "natural." Watering them when it's not raining is not "natural." Humanity hasn't been "natural" for more than 20,000 years or so. So when people say "return to nature" or "return to the earth" I'm not really sure what they mean. And I'm usually not so sure they know what they mean either. So what do you mean?

Be environmentally aware. I didn't say return to the past. They didn't give a rat's ass in the past about the environment. Return to an awareness of our relationship to the earth. We can do that in a modern world. Maybe.

Isn't it true though that China is one of the worst polluters in the world today? And isn't the vast majority of the population there less than modern?

Everything we do has an impact on the planet to some degree. But there's only so much we can control and there's only so much we can even be aware of.

What exactly are you proposing? But first, what exactly is the problem you're trying to solve? I lost it somewhere long ago in this thread. Can you tell me the answer in fewer rather than more words???

I'd wager that it will prove significantly easier to make cities environmentally friendly.

That you would take this position is curious to me. Have you ever approached a city such as Los Angeles or Phoenix or Albuquerque or Dallas or Atlanta or New York and not seen the miasma hanging over these places? When GW talks of the population of China, do you imagine the pollution is coming from the rice paddies on the mountain sides? Are they not reporting in Canada the genuine concern the Olympics Committee has about the impact of the BeiJing air on the athletes? Are there ore smelters or paper mills in the big cities?
Consider the footprint of a city the amount of land it takes to support that population. How much arable land produces the food necessary? How much land/ocean floor is required to accomodate the garbage? How much water storage is required?

It was never meant for cattle or sheep.

Oil fields indicate once thriving eco-systems that no longer exist. Climate changes, mountains rise and fall, the earth shifts. Add water to a dry environment and the world will shift again. Will that be good or bad? No one knows till it happens. The Arizona Canal transports water to the Sonoran desert enabling the Phoenix-Tucson corridor to now be almost wall-to-wall buildings. The crop lands have continuously migrated further and further away from their 1940s locales. All because water became available. Is this good or bad? My opinion reflects in the fact we moved out of that corridor as soon as we could. For the millions living there now, they seem to be happy with no snow, no blizzards, lots of suntan lotion and the best golf courses in the world. They also seem to be not too concerned with the notion that the groundwater supply is perilously low, that California, Nevada, and Utah are fighting for a major portion of the water going into the Arizona Canal. But, then, the folk of New Orleans were not too concerned that their city is below sea level. The folk in Florida seem not too concerned that they live in hurricane alley. But, then, as the Eagles sang: every form of refuge has its price.